Passion Statement : A 14-Year-Old Junior High Student Defends Her Decision to Express Her Strong Opinions About Safe Sex. She Wore Her Heartfelt Beliefs on Her Sleeves in the Form of Condoms. ASTRIANNA JOHNSON, Last September, 14-year-old Astrianna Johnson began wearing condoms to Mary McCleod Bethune Junior High School in South-Central to make a point. The eighth-grader pinned the condoms onto her shoes and clothing, protesting the school's sex education program as inadequate. After the school forbade her to wear the condoms, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District. In his May 16 decision in favor of the school district, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. said principals "must be given great latitude to govern schools attended by children." The ACLU will not appeal the ruling. and Principal Edith Morris says the school complies with state law
requiring that abstinence be taught as the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and AIDS. The school teaches sex education in the seventh grade. Astrianna, who did not attend seventh grade at the school and did not receive sex education, says the instruction should be continuous. Astrianna was interviewed by Joy B. Davis.

Using Move-In Checklist Avoids Move-Out Woes KEVIN POSTEMA, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES; Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, an apartment owners' service group

Violence In Utopia: What the Venice Gang Killings Mean to L.A. Kevin Starr, Kevin Starr, a contributing editor to Opinion, teaches in the School of Urban and Regional Planning at USC. His next volume on the history of California, "The Dream Endures: California Through the Great Depression," will be published by Oxford University Press